


So Low

by unos



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Contemplative Train Rides, Friendship, Gen, Getting Together, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-16 18:24:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13059585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unos/pseuds/unos
Summary: The last message from Shoma came weeks ago. It’s stiff, awkward, the kind of polite phrase one might send a near-stranger. Yuzu wasn't upset by this. It took Shoma almost a year to warm up to him. It took a season more for their friendship to become something a little more comfortable.“Hey,” he drafts. “What would you say if I said that I will be in Nagoya in about an hour and a half?”He deletes that.“Hey,” he writes. “I’m in your city. Want to meet?”He deletes that, as well.“hey,” he writes. “I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing.”It's a train ride to nowhere until it isn't.(we all need friends when we're in tough places, mentally: Yuzuru Hanyu is no exception)





	1. Matter of Time

He could have stayed in Canada, is the thing. But he can’t train on the ice very much yet. It’s been weeks and weeks of unplanned free time that Yuzu can’t seem to fill, hours upon hours in his day. There's physical therapy, massages, swimming, even more physical therapy. He can do that at home. He wanted to go home. He wasn’t home for his birthday, but then he never does get to be home for that. This time, he spent it at the rink, with cake he actually got to eat and the friendly shoulder claps of this team mates, his coaches, his team.

Momentary distraction: that’s how Yuzuru moves from day to day, telling himself he is growing stronger with each hour.

It doesn’t feel true, but it is. It is slower than he would like, but it may be in time. Not quite the right time, but good enough.

That’s what he tells himself, when Saya comes out of the house to hug him hello. Better every day.

He gets on the train three days after, when his family’s nurturing becomes suffocating. The train station is busy, but there is a line that seems as good as any, straight to Tokyo.

“Hey,” says the young woman next to him. “Wanna sit?”

She motions to the seat next to her, empty but for her backpack. Yuzu didn’t bring anything but his phone and his wallet and he thinks yes. His leg aches. Not bad, not worrying, but enough for him to take her up on the offer.

“Thanks,” he says, and wonders if she recognizes him, despite the mask. But she nods and goes back to her newspaper.

Yuzuru is in that, adverts for fabric softener. He ducks into his jacket collar, turns to the window. He watches the landscape move past, too fast for details, but comforting in its familiarity.

His mother texts two hours later, the vibration of the phone almost drowned out by the vibration of Yuzu’s forehead against the window. It almost drowns out the humming of Yuzu’s head, too. Almost.

“Where are you?”

He doesn’t know. At some point, the young woman must have moved, because the place next to Yuzu is empty, so he can’t even ask anyone. In the seat in front of him, a toddler is making small wet noises.

The kid turns, looks over the seat. Pigtails with big plastic bobbles and the mischievous eyes reveal a little girl. She takes Yuzuru in with the curiosity of the young. There’s spit all over her face. Yuzuru smiles at her, pulls the mask down to make sure she can see his face.

She smiles back to reveal a startling lack of teeth. It feels like an achievement of sorts.

“Hello,” she says, in her baby language. Or Yuzuru guesses it is hello.

“Hello, what’s your name?”

At his question, her father turns and throws Yuzu a curious smile, as if asking what this strange man is doing, talking to his baby. Yuzu feels a little disappointed when the man pulls his daughter down.

“I don’t know,” he replies to his mother. “I’ll be back home later tonight. Don’t worry.”

There is little to no chance his mother won’t worry. But she worries all the time, and there is nothing Yuzuru can do to stop her.

He sinks back in his seat and waits for Tokyo to appear. He spends about seventeen minutes standing in the bustle in front of the station, thinking about where to go from here . It’s bright, and the press of people around him feels overwhelming. It’s good, too much. In the end, he turns back to the trains, and there.

In big neon, in ten minutes, another train. Not back, no. Onward.

He finds a seat on this train, too, his mask pulled carefully around his face again, just in case. Nobody would expect him here. It’s merely precaution.

He doesn’t have headphones on him to listen to music, so instead he sits and listens to the conversations around him. An old couple discussing their dinner plans. A group of teens excited about a new movie about, what’s that? He doesn’t quite know. Another child, this one squealing in displeasure. Two young women, leaning into each other, whispering. It’s a cacophony of familiar whispers.

He hasn’t done this in a while. In Canada, he can’t understand the bits and pieces of conversation. He’s an outsider, dropping into the background of other people’s lives, another stranger. He’s a stranger here, too, but the feeling is different.

Yuzu sinks deeper into his seat. His phone buzzes with another message. Not his mother, who accepts his texts for what they are. Not Saya with a cutting if humorous dig at him. It’s Brian, somewhere across the world, in another time zone, in another life, almost completely apart from this train on the road to, well...

“If you overextend yourself I won’t let you back onto the ice for another week,” he writes. Joke’s on him, Yuzuru has been training on ice for half an hour every morning for the past few days. Yuzu doesn’t reply that to him: there’s no sense in telling Brian what he already knows.

But Yuzuru should send a message to someone. Something. Anything, to make sure that at the end of this train ride, he won’t be stranded in yet another city with nothing to do.

They don’t talk between events, is the thing. Their friendship is entirely dependent on the competitions they enter in, and well. Yuzuru hasn’t entered any of the ones that they might usually share. His withdrawal from nationals was the last one he’d counted on.

The last message from Shoma came weeks ago. It’s stiff, awkward, the kind of polite phrase one might send a near-stranger. Yuzu wasn't upset by this. It took Shoma almost a year to warm up to him. It took a season more for their friendship to become something a little more comfortable.

“Hey,” he drafts. “What would you say if I said that I will be in Nagoya in about an hour and a half?”

He deletes that.

“Hey,” he writes. “I’m in your city. Want to meet?”

He deletes that, as well.

“hey,” he writes. “I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

Delete.

“I think I might miss you.”

Delete.

“I wanted to congratulate you on your GPF results.”

Delete.

Next to him, there’s a giggle. The two women are throwing him curious glances.

“Sorry,” Yuzuru says. He must have sighed, or made some other noise.

“No, no,” the one sitting closer to him says, and laughs again. It’s a nice noise, bright and light.

She hesitates, but her friend leans over her and looks Yuzuru straight in the eye. She has the kind of piercing, analytical glance that makes Yuzuru feel exposed. Truth-seeker, he thinks.

“What are you writing?”

Her friend claps her hands to her face. “You can’t ask that,” she exclaims.

“No,” Yuzuru says. It should feel like an intrusion but it doesn’t. They don’t know him, no hint of recognition in their eyes. “I’m trying to text someone something.”

The girl with the piercing eyes nods, suddenly sympathetic.

“Don’t know what to say?”

It may be the fact that he’s alone. Perhaps it is his lack of a plan if this doesn’t work out, or that they started this conversation. The situation is alien to him, uncommon but not uncomfortable.

“No, I know what to say. I’m going to visit a… friend. And he doesn’t know I’m coming, he doesn’t know I’m in the country at all. But I want to see him. I didn’t know I wanted to see him until I boarded this train but I do. I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance, again.”

It breaks out of him, in a desperate stream. It’s easier to tell a stranger.

“So now you’re trying to tell him?”

“Yes.”

The blushing girl smiles, and pulls her friend back into her seat.

“Is this a close friend?”

Yuzu hesitates. He doesn’t know. Maybe ? At times it feels like it, like they could face anything together. If their lives were a little different, if there was time and space for such a relationship in his life.

“Sometimes,” is what he replies with. The blushing girl nods, thoughtful. Her friend snorts. “That sounds complex.” Her friend elbows her, but she persists, leaning over again to meet Yuzuru’s eyes.

“What do you want from this friend?”

She’s painfully direct. She also takes the elbow to her ribs without wincing, so Yuzuru respects her.

“Just write him when you’ll arrive,” the other girl says, softly. “Whatever you want, that way your friend can decide what to do, too.”

“Yes!” her friend agrees. “If he wants to come he will! And if not, well. You tried.”

It’s like they don’t need Yuzu’s input at all, course of action decided. Or perhaps they don’t need to know more: Yuzu watches one girl wrap her arms around the other’s waist, lean her chin onto her shoulder.  

Yuzu looks at his phone, screen black. His reflection looks back. He doesn’t know what these women read in his posture, his eyes, his words. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

“I don’t know how to say it.”

“Well,” one of them says, and the other interrupt. Direct it will be. “Write what you feel. Don’t overthink it.”

Yuzu lights up his phone, looks at the empty chat window. Looks at Shoma’s last message, and thinks that oh, of all the people in the world, Shoma would understand that Yuzuru can’t always find the right words. He turns every phrase, every word over in his own head. Yuzuru understands this now. He used to get frustrated with how quietly, how slowly Shoma spoke.

“Hey,” he begins. And perhaps this does not need to be succinct. Perhaps Shoma won’t mind if Yuzuru tells him his reasoning from the beginning. He is always curling and looping his thoughts until he arrives where he wants to arrive.

“I got onto a train today, not knowing where to go. I’m meant to be visiting my family, but our house is too small when there is nothing to do but think. I’m sorry I won’t see you at Nationals. I’m sorry I couldn’t compete at GPF with you. I’m in Japan, and I’m on a train to Nagoya for no reason other than that home felt stifling. I don’t expect anything from you, so if you’re busy or you don’t want to see me, that is okay. I just want”

Delete.

There is only an hour left and now that Yuzuru knows what he wants out of this day. He has a goal that is more immediate than becoming healthier, than returning to competitive shape. He doesn’t know how to ask Shoma to help him fulfill this. It’s not like getting through all the exercises of his daily physical therapy. He needs help there, too, but it isn’t like this.

“Hey,” he writes. “I’m in Japan. I was home, but now I’m on a train to Nagoya. I’ll arrive there in about an hour.”

“Send it,” the girls chorus.

“I can do it for you,” the direct one says. “I can’t promise I won’t add something embarrassing to the message though, so you better do it yourself.”

“Ok,” Yuzu says, and presses send. “Ok.”

It isn’t perfect. It isn’t close to perfect, his message. But perhaps Shoma will read between the lines.

The girls laugh, turning to each other again, Yuzuru and his problems receding to the background of their lives again.

He leans his head against the window again, glass cold against his forehead. He’ll leave a grease stain to prove he was there.

Shoma doesn’t reply. He might be at practice. He might not want to see Yuzu at all: this was the kind of impulsive and dumb decision that of course wouldn’t work out. He can’t expect others to throw over their daily routine for him because he felt like riding a train across the country.

He bids his advisors goodbye and exists the train. As he gets up his knees protest and his spine cracks in an unwelcome reminder of his physical limitation. He pockets his phone. It’s light outside, still. Nagoya is familiar enough: he has been here often enough to know the central area at least. There is a train back in regular intervals, and even if Yuzu doesn’t make it, he has enough money to spend a night in a hotel.

But who is he kidding, really. He wonders, when he starts walking toward the exit. There’s a lump in his throat. He shouldn’t have expected anything. He shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up.

He walks, slowly, until his hip and knee stop feeling stiff. It’s nice to loosen up his body after sitting for so long. He didn’t feel cramped in the train, but he realises that he wasn’t in the most comfortable position.

He walks until he reaches the west exit. The station is huge, and busy, tiled floors multiplying the noise of thousands of feet. Perhaps he should turn back. What’s the point of being here at all, if he can’t see him.

It’s chance, in the end.

Yuzuru, passing through the door just as Shoma enters. He has a bag slung over his shoulder, team jacket on like he doesn’t care who recognizes him. Sweatpants over beat-up sneakers, and his hair. It’s wet.

It’s an odd detail to notice, but Yuzuru’s heart is hammering in his chest at the sight of him. He’s here. He came. Yuzu turns on his heel, apologizing to the people behind him as he squeezes past them and back into the station.

Warmth spreads through his entire body at the sight of Shoma's back, at the curve of his neck, head bent over his phone. He isn’t looking where he is going at all but he’s here.

It has to mean something.  

Yuzu walks faster, trying to catch up despite the people in his way. His phone buzzes in his pocket, so he fumbles with it as he walks.

“I came to pick you up,” Shoma wrote. “Where are you?”

Right behind you, Yuzuru wants to call to him.

But Shoma stops and turns as if he felt that Yuzu is only steps away. Yuzu was already reaching out for his shoulder. Shoma's eyes widen, they’re so close.

“Oh,” he says. 

It’s too late for Yuzu to stop, though, his momentum carrying him forward. And Shoma notices, reacts, and instead of a collision, he brings his arms up around Yuzu’s back and steadies him.

His hands fist in the back of Yuzu’s jacket.

The world narrows down to that and the warmth of him along Yuzu’s front. There's a gasp between them, choked and overwhelmed.

To an outsider, this hug might look purposeful, like friends who haven’t seen each other reuniting. Maybe that is what it is, Yuzuru doesn’t know. Because it feels infinitely more fragile to him.

But Shoma is here. Yuzu can savor just that. This moment. He wraps his arms around Shoma’s shoulders.

He says hello like a sigh of relief, and feels Shoma grasp him tighter.

 


	2. So Long Since

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title of this chapter is from Train Song by Vashti Bunyan. Verit sent me the cover by Moddi months and months ago, and that's really the version you should listen to. It's perfect.

 

In the end, Shoma reached up to wrap his arms around Yuzu’s neck, allowing a short press of body against body.

“I’m glad I came,” Yuzu said.

“Me, too.”

At night, trains are quiet and dimmed. There are no conversations to overhear. The other passengers rest. For a while, Yuzu watches the dark landscape pass by. There are no details, no lights reflecting. It’s calm.

He has space to think now, feels almost empty-headed. He doesn’t quite know what to think but that line of questioning feels easier than the low hum of anxiety that seemed inescapable before.

His phone is filled with concern, questions about his stupid spontaneous escape. Where have you been, when will you be back, did you think at all, what about your health, do you feel okay, did you overextend yourself, if this sets you back. It’s a mirror of his own mind, hours ago. Low humming anxiety.

He doesn’t know why Shoma could do what his family couldn’t.

He didn’t ask. Maybe that’s it.

He didn’t ask what Yuzu was doing here, why he got on the train, the barrage of questions Yuzu would pose if one of his friends suddenly turned up in his hometown without warning or reason. Shoma just took it in stride.

“So,” Shoma began, and Yuzu tensed. Here come the questions, after all. “What do you want to do?”

“Oh.” This was a question Yuzu could answer easily, if a question he hadn’t quite expected. “What do you usually do after practice?”

“I go home. Eat. Do some homework for my classes, play games.” Shoma shrugged, as if this is mundane, as if he didn’t want to bore Yuzu with this. But it sounded nice.

“Do you want to grab some food, maybe? If this is when you usually eat?”

Shoma bit his lip, tearing at a dry bit of skin. It didn’t bleed, but Yuzu still almost felt the sting of it himself, licked his lip to soothe the sympathy pain. Shoma blinked, slowly.

“Sure,” he said. “What do you want?”

Yuzuru hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and he’d been ravenous. Yuzuru has an immaculate food plan that schedules what to eat at what time during the day for optimal regeneration of tissue and support of bone, maximal healing. It’s a lot more food than he likes, a lot of food he dislikes.

Shoma likes meat. Probably pork or beef, if he isn’t trolling the interviewers. He might: Yuzuru has realized that Shoma keeps his truth close to his chest. What he reveals is small bits and pieces of the outermost layer of himself.

They found a place after a little bit of research online. Good reviews and the relative proximity were the qualifying characteristics. Or so Shoma said. He walks through Nagoya with an ease that Yuzu envies, a little. He’s home, fully and unquestionably.

Yuzu should feel that way about Sendai, he thinks, as the train passes through a village. Street lamps throw yellow light in a staccato rhythm that feels like blinking, hypnotic. He wants to feel that way about Toronto. But neither place feels fully his, like he knows it down to the brick.

In hindsight, the restaurant they went to was probably one of Shoma’s favourites, his interactions with the wait staff fluid and comfortable in a way Shoma usually isn’t.  

They chose barbecue, in the end. Shoma placed meat in the grid with a focused expression, determined to grill as many pieces as possible while maintaining enough space for optimal crispiness and juiciness.

Of the protein that Yuzu has eaten in the past weeks, it was probably the most delicious. “It’s so good,” he said, again. And again. And again, until Shoma swatted him in the fingers with his chopsticks. Yuzu was trying to steal his piece of loin, but hey.

“It’s what you deserve for thieving,” Shoma joked, and placed a row of the same stuff on Yuzu’s side of the grid. Yuzu watched him, lips greasy and face flushed from eating and his hair fluffy, now that it had dried.

They had never done this before. They had shared meals, of course: at banquets, before rehearsals for galas, fancy dinners with the rest of the team, stolen cake in the hotel kitchen. But not like this. It had never been just the two of them, without anyone else there for distraction when silence falls.

Yuzu finds that he liked it. There were beats in which they both waited for the meat to sizzle, but time passed fast with Shoma, flying rather than floating. It’s a dizzying difference from the train, where time almost seems suspended.

Another village passes.

“What?” Shoma asked. Yuzu had been looking at him. Even now, it makes him blush, because Shoma was blushing, twin red spots appearing at the bottom of his cheeks.

“Nothing,” Yuzu said, and stuffed his face with more meat. He wonders now what Shoma must have thought. But Shoma merely tilted his head.

That’s something about them: they play well off each other, joking and talking easily. The timing’s right, now that they know each other better. The timing stays right, even if they haven’t talked for weeks. It’s reassuring.

Shoma didn’t ask him any of the important questions, the big questions that scare Yuzu because he doesn’t have any answers. Maybe there are no answers, maybe he will only find them in hindsight. Maybe that’s fine. He just let Yuzu ramble about his progress on the three games they both play (mediocre, which made Shoma laugh), his changed diet (So much meat. So much tofu. So much milk), and his physical therapy.

“At least it isn’t vegetable juice,” Shoma laughed when Yuzu complained about the fake banana flavor of the protein shakes he forces down his throat every morning. “Vegetable juice is rank, but my trainer makes me drink it every time I fall on a run-through.”

Yuzu winced. “That must suck.”

“I mean,” Shoma said, with one of those saucy grins that Yuzu sees so rarely, “I do.”

Whatever Yuzu’s face did, it made Shoma cackle. He threw his head back, nose scrunching. It drove warmth into Yuzu’s cheeks. But he was pleased to have caused this reaction, even though Shoma was laughing at his expense. He wants to make Shoma laugh like that all the time.

“The juice comes in these little packages,” Shoma explained, still cackling. “With little straws and things.”

“Oh,” Yuzu said. That was what he thought. Of course, that was what he thought. Shoma was still smiling, impish, for a while after. He kept smiling all day, Yuzuru realises.

He can’t think of a moment in which Shoma reverted to his blank expression. There was very little awkward, except for.

Oh god. The futon. Yuzu catches his own expression in the mirror surface of the train and yeah. That feels about right.

Because Shoma’s room was surprisingly tidy, except for the futon, which was out and about with a lot of blankets and pillows strewn around it. He should have just bitten down on that comment. But he didn’t.

“I didn’t think you’d sleep on a futon.”

“Huh?” Shoma said. There was that head tilt again. It’s like Yuzu was puzzling him often, the gesture reoccured so frequently. At least he didn’t look uncomfortable. He just looked sort of puzzled, so Yuzu tried to explain, and it just lead further down into awkwardness.

“I kind of... assumed you had a bed, since you sleep in beds so much when travelling.”

“That’s a little weird. Don’t _you_ bring your own futon when you travel?”

Yuzu tried to shrug it off like it was casual but internally there was screaming... well. Bed. He sat down on the corner of the futon, pushed the blankets to the side to clear a little space, and immediately second-guessed this action.

Very casual, Yuzu. But Shoma stepped closer, and took them from his hands to fold and lay over the upper half of the futon.

“Only when my asthma strikes,” Yuzu said, mouth moving of its own accord. He does have to be careful, but it’s mostly fine. Most hotels have hypoallergenic materials nowadays. He barely struggles with this anymore. It’s fine, he’s fine.

Shoma grinned, wry and amused little thing that brought out the dimples in his cheeks. Grinned and hummed something inaudible and sat down next to him like he didn’t mind the invasion of his privacy at all.

Tokyo is bustling even at night. Yuzu’s connection doesn’t leave for nearly an hour, so he sits down in a 24 hour café and begins to answer the texts he’s been ignoring all day. There are many: his mother, Saya, even his father. Nobu, with a random question that Yuzu immediately fires a reply to, Keiji with his daily uplifting quote. Brian, with several threats disguised as jokes.

“Won’t you answer those?”

Yuzu had startled, shoulders around his ears. But Shoma was just looking at him, with that steady gaze of his, like he didn’t really care either way. When Yuzu shook his head, hesitantly, Shoma shrugged, and tilted to knock his shoulder into Yuzu’s.

“Ok. Want to charge it so you can maybe do it later?”

They played a game, instead. Not a video game, a board game. Because apparently when Shoma says he likes to game, he means all possible variations of competition simulations. Mostly, Yuzu thinks, Shoma likes to win. He likes to look at the skillset needed to succeed and to acquire it as quickly and effectively as possible.

They started with Go, because it is a classic and because, according to his own judgement, Shoma sucks at it. Yuzu at least knows the rules to that one, so he thought he’d be fine. They were both awful at it. They tried chess next, at which Shoma is marginally better at than Yuzu. Shoma cheered loudly at his own win.

That’s how Yuzu gets to know Itsuki, Shoma’s brother.

“Wow,” he said, deadpan, head sticking into the room. “I didn’t know you had friends.”

Shoma, with the reflexes of someone who falls on his face several times a day, grabbed a pillow and threw it at the door. Itsuki, with the reflexes of a brother who clearly saw this coming, ducked. He stayed for a game involving bamboo and hungry pandas.

“That’s Boyang,” Yuzu said when he moved the panda. Shoma laughed, shaking his head.

“That’s you,” Shoma said when he moves the gardener. The gardener is a plastic figure of a harried looking sinewy older man with a rake. Yuzu stuck his tongue out at him.

“I win,” said Itsuki, a beat later, throwing three mission cards onto the board.

When Shoma and Yuzu looked at him shocked and confused, he cackled. It was a familiar expression: the similarities between Shoma and his brother seem strongest when they are gleeful.

“That, my friends, is what happens when you play against the master,” he said, and got up.

“I can’t believe,” Shoma whispered, and checked the rest of Itsuki’s mission cards. His brother, almost out of the door, turned and winked at Yuzu. “Shouldn’t have flirted so much.”

He closed the door gently behind him. They could have heard a single rhinestone drop in the following silence.

Yuzu burns his mouth on his coffee drink. He doesn’t like coffee, but off all the options available, this was the most appealing one. It’s caramel sweet and sticky, a meal in itself. Shoma would love it, probably. He takes the cup with him, sipping on it every now and then as the train fills.

It’s not really a night train for sleeping: most of the passengers seem to be commuting after a late night at work. Men and women in suits, looking as harried as the gardener in the game. A few young people in their mid-twenties, perhaps students. Yuzu wonders if they have part-time jobs, if they’re going home to their parents or if they share apartments with friends or a partner.

It’s a little strange, that a year or two from now, he could be one of them. He feels so apart from them right now, with his mask up so no one will recognize him.

In the end, it didn’t matter than Shoma didn’t ask. Yuzu told him anyway.

“Shoma,” Yuzu said, into the silent aftermath of Itsuki’s comment. It didn’t make him look up, he merely hummed and continued putting the pieces back into their box, sorting by colour. “I haven’t told you why I’m here, yet.”

That got his attention. Shoma’s face is a marvel. He’s striking in an unassuming way that sneaks up on you, cute that turns into handsome with the focus of his eyes, a casual movement of his hand. A smile.

“I thought you would,” Shoma said. “Once you wanted to talk about it.”

Shoma likes to pretend he knows little, but Yuzuru is almost always sure he is lying. Pretending to be more indifferent than he truly is a persona that hides someone who is thoughtful and attentive and empathetic. Maybe he has to close himself off to stay sane: caring that intensely must be exhausting.

He continued putting the pieces back, giving Yuzu space to think of what to say. Yuzu watched him put the lid on the box and was still lacking for words.

Shoma doesn’t push, just sits back next to Yuzu. It’s strange: Shoma isn’t patient with himself. Yuzu knows this from practice sessions and games they’re played together, that frustration bubbles up in him until Shoma bursts, anger or tears and most often a mixture of both. Sometimes, more rarely, it’s laughter. He is impatient with himself, but he was willing to sit there and wait for Yuzu to find the right way to say it and even now, Yuzu thinks what he ended up saying was woefully inadequate.

“I was taking a train at random,” Yuzu said. Shoma nodded. He was looking at his knees, rather than at Yuzu. It made it easier, almost. It was almost like telling a stranger on a train, waiting for unsolicited advice. “I just wanted to go somewhere else, for a little bit, and then I was in Tokyo, and I didn’t want to stay there.”

“I think I was looking for something, and I don’t quite know what. But I stood there, and Nagoya came up on the information board and I thought that if I can go anywhere, then I might as well come here.”

Yuzu hesitated, but Shoma didn’t interrupt. He sat still, listening, biting his lip again at the silence that built between them. It must have been tense, for him. Awkward, maybe. But he just sat, fidgeting, and Yuzu burst.

He isn’t patient with himself. It’s hard to stand, to be treated with care, sometimes. He regrets saying it now, impulsive and frustrated.

“What would you say if I wanted to stop skating?”

It was meant to garner a reaction, make Shoma do something more than sit and accept it.

Shoma just shook his head and smiled. “Don’t joke about that.”

Not the reaction Yuzu wanted. Sometimes he almost feels transparent to others, like they can trace his ambitions and motivations because they are obvious. He felt naked, then.

“Ok.”

In the darkness of this train, home coming closer and closer, it’s easy to admit that it was unfair. At least a little, to go to Nagoya hoping to just magically feel better. Shoma still smiled, if a little wry.

“So why are you here?”

It’s as if Yuzu had given him permission to prod, but he says it in a tone that is quite bland, almost blasé. A few months ago, Yuzuru would have interpreted this as indifference, a polite question from someone who not-so-secretly hates small-talk. He can hear the tension now, read the set of Shoma’s shoulders, the way he enunciates words slowly, carefully, as the sign of strong emotion.

“To see you.”

That made Shoma’s smile brighten, but not enough. In hindsight, Yuzu might as well just have confessed. Maybe that’s how Shoma took it, maybe that’s why his smile turned from wry and a little worried to something bright and lovely.

“I wrote that text so many times. I tried to get the right words, but I’m not sure they exist. But… I feel regret, that we haven’t seen each other this season. I got injured and instead of competing with you, at GPF, at Nationals, as is right, I’m--”

“You’re healing,” Shoma interrupted, something rough in his voice. “And you’re coming back stronger.”

“I’m trying.” It sounded a lot more plaintive than Yuzu intended. A lot more honest. Something in Shoma’s face shifted, a full-body tilt closer. Yuzu might have seen it coming, but he’d been trying for honesty. It’s strange, how difficult admitting that he isn’t okay felt.

“It’s like I live from competition to competition, usually, and I know I’ll see you at events in the future so working towards that isn’t hard. It’s routine, there is certainty.”

“I’m so uncertain,” Yuzu ended. He watched Shoma swallow, his eyes moving like he was searching for something in Yuzu’s face, a solution. An answer he might give. Sitting like this, shoulder to shoulder, Yuzu could see every twitch, every small expression that he might otherwise have missed. There is none of that wry wisecracking left in Shoma.

The resolve was beautiful to watch: the way Shoma’s shoulders lowered, his jaw set, eyes growing focused. Whatever he was going to say, it would be the right thing.

And it’s true. No words necessary, Shoma just did what Yuzu needed without knowing. He moved closer, hand on Yuzu’s shoulder to push at him, so he could lean in and hook his chin over Yuzu’s shoulder in a hug. His hands spread out on Yuzu’s back. Yuzu made an embarrassing, confused noise. But Shoma laughed, close and warm and gentle, and held him until Yuzu allowed himself to sink into it.

Some of the tension in him dissipated in that moment. Shoma had chipped away at it all day, the train ride had helped, too, but that must have been the moment Yuzu began feeling light again. Like his body finally finally relaxed.

The words slipped out, but Yuzu doesn’t have it in him to regret them.

“I’ve missed you.”

Shoma didn’t seem taken aback. He simply tightened his hold for a moment before pulling back. In a motion that seemed to surprise even him, Shoma carded a hand through Yuzu’s fringe, pushing it back to meet his eyes.

Yuzu looks at himself in the window. That’s what Shoma must have seen, how Shoma might have seen him: a little blurry around the edges, only part of him in focus. Yuzu remembers looking down at Shoma’s cracked lips, thinking that maybe he could lean in and.

But Shoma pulled back before Yuzu could finish the thought. He’d laughed, a little awkwardly as if to disperse the tension between them. Yuzu is almost thankful for that, now.

“What was that?” Yuzu brought out, choked and hands unsure of their place.

Shoma shrugged, slightly bashful. “You like hugs.”

“I do.”

“Good.”

There is a beat of silence.

“I also wanted to wish you good luck,” Yuzu said, just to fill it. He meant to tease a little, but it served as a reminder of why he was here, as well. It fell flat. “For Nationals.”

Shoma snorted. “See, at first I thought you came to sabotage me by overfeeding me and beating me at board games, but I guess not so much.”

Yuzu doesn’t know how Shoma keeps him light, how he manages to even out the dark pitfalls so effortlessly. It’s so easy for him. It’s easy to push the frustration and anger and sadness back and joke with him. He did it at Four Continents, he did it at Worlds, he did it at the Team event. Something about him puts skating into perspective.

“How will I ever come back from this debilitating loss,” Yuzu whined. “I can’t believe your little brother beat us both.”

“Well,” Shoma said, “he does get more practice. We’ll just have to train more, so we can beat him.”

He got up resolutely, offered Yuzu a hand to pull him up. Every bone in Yuzuru’s body creaked. In his train seat, Yuzu stretches at the memory, loosening his shoulders and hips, shifting and curling up again.

“We can do that in the off-time at Olympics,” Shoma suggested. “There’ll be lots of people who might want to play. Mirai, Satoko, Kana, for sure. Maybe Nathan. Javi! I hope Keiji does well at Nationals, he’s amazing at board games.”

Shoma said it like it’s something to look forward to, like that is a secure plan: set in stone just because he voiced it.

“I see,” Yuzu said. Shoma’s hand was clasped in his, Shoma was gesturing with the other. “That sounds amazing.” He squeezed Shoma’s hand to make him aware of this. But Shoma smiled up at him, genuine and yet a little impish. Something of his usual humor crept into the expression.

“And if you injure yourself again before Olympics happen, we can play it on your deathbed. We can play dramatic media montages in the background. It’ll be great.”

It made Yuzu laugh. Perspective, again. Shoma is not optimistic, but something about his mindset calms the overthinking parts of Yuzuru’s brain. Perhaps it is because he knows that there is someone else, who also overthinks, so he can afford to think less. Perhaps it is just the change of perspective, or perhaps it is the endless amount of faith Shoma seems to put in him.

“Hey,” Shoma said, shaking Yuzu’s hand a little, “I have enough certainty for both of us. You’ll be fine. You’re the one to beat, always.”

It should be weird, to trust his direct competition so much, but Shoma builds him up. Every time he claims he wants to beat Yuzu someday, he means the best version of Yuzu. The version Yuzu is waiting to be again. It will take time, of course, but Yuzu can try.

Sendai comes closer with every minute, and so does health. It’s easier to believe in it, now, to believe in nutrition and physical therapy and the support of his team, despite his halting progress. It’s like Yuzu to want faster, better, stronger, more.

He didn’t skip his exercises, despite being tempted to.

“Hey,” he asked, when they were down in the kitchen drinking water. “Can you help me do physical therapy?”

Shoma nodded, no reserves. Yuzu knows he’s never been badly injured, so the extent of Shoma’s knowledge and his personal experience must be limited.  but Shoma approached the exercises with the same stoic attentiveness he approaches everything: he let Yuzu explain, and then he did his best, a rapidly growing learning curve. It was a different kind of touch than the hugs they had shared, and not one Yuzu could enjoy as he bent into the forms and instructed Shoma on where to push and prod him.

Shoma was good at it, poking fingers and light, ticklish taps that helped Yuzu hold positions long enough, hands firm when Yuzu needed assistance in bending his ankle to loosen it. It was strangely intimate in a clinical way, like Shoma was learning the ins and outs of Yuzu’s body for no reason. To sit on the futon so close and work on his body like this. It was too painful to feel good, but it helped.

“I hate this,” Yuzu said after, starfished out on Shoma’s futon. “It’s worse than warming up before a competition. It’s worse than rolling out my muscles. It’s worse than the orange sludge.”

“I don’t know,” Shoma said, from the floor next to the futon, where he’d spread himself out. “I kind of enjoyed that.”

He hasn’t thought about the long-term stuff while with Shoma, not even while prodding all the parts of his body that ache, all the parts he isn’t allowed to put pressure on yet.

He didn’t think about each hour and its effect. It was just a day to waste, not defined by how much he could cram into each minute to achieve optimal results. If he had been healthy, he wouldn’t have had this day.

Looking out into the darkness of landscape moving past, Yuzu wonders if maybe he should have more days that have nothing to do with improvement. He never thinks he trains that much, since he’s only on the ice for a few hours every day, and yet everything in his life is skating. And now that it isn’t, he’s been lost.

He feels ok, now. Nothing has become clearer or more certain. Perhaps he’ll be back to his old thoughts tomorrow. But he thinks about that first moment. A sigh pressed against wet hair.

Shoma chuckling against him, the air knocked out of him by the velocity of Yuzu’s arrival. How he could feel his arms tighten around Yuzu’s chest before Shoma stepped back. Yuzuru pulled his mask down so it caught under his chin. It probably looked silly, but Shoma looked at him steadily.  

“I’m sorry I didn’t text back. I was at practice.”

Yuzu was so happy to see him, the intensity of the emotion surprised him. “It’s okay. You’re here!”

It made Shoma smile, a little awkwardly. “I am.” He motioned at his body like ta-da, the magic trick of existing. It was slightly sarcastic the way Shoma is, like his entire life is a perpetual eye roll. Yuzu found himself smiling, nodding.

“Hi,” Yuzu said again, inane, a little helpless. Upon arrival, he had no idea what to do but take Shoma in. He hadn’t seen him in months, not since the summer shows. His hair had grown longer, dripping a little, ringlets of it curling on his forehead and the back of his neck. “Your hair is wet.”

Shoma shrugged. “Like I said. I just came from practice.”

He thinks of his phone blinking and blinking with texts, and of Shoma ignoring it throughout the day as they talked and played and Yuzu felt, bit by bit more carefree. Normal again, like this was a return to himself.

“Will you bring me to the station?”

Yuzu didn’t mean to sound small, but Shoma just nodded. He touched his fingertips softly to Yuzu’s palm. “Of course.”

And he did. They looked up the connection. And then they shared a set of seats on the bus, idling from connection to connection. It had grown dark outside, the city illuminated by the neon lights of shops. It looked completely different like this.

Shoma, watching the city pass by, sat pensive. The lights reflected in his eyes, playing off the shine of his skin. He’s beautiful. There were no words to tell him that wouldn’t cheapen it, so Yuzu internalised the image instead.

They aren’t the type for long goodbyes. Shoma didn’t ask if Yuzu will watch Nationals, Yuzu didn’t tell him he will visit again.

The train stops in Sendai. It’s late. Or perhaps it is early. Yuzu is looking forward to his bed, to sleeping in, to annoying Saya and kissing his mother’s cheek when she shoos him out of the kitchen.

In the end, Shoma reached up to wrap his arms around Yuzu’s neck.

“I’m glad I came,” Yuzu said.  

“Me, too.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this in a fit of negative emotions, and rewrote it on a train ride home. Fitting, huh.  
> (there's internet on this train. It's called WifiOnICE which is all kinds of funny)  
> I hope you liked this. I hope it soothes some of the sting of real life.  
> At least the fictional Yuzu in my head gets to be content.

**Author's Note:**

> I wonder if Yuzu feels lonely and frustrated and feels isolated by his injury. This is.. what happened when I entertained the idea. 
> 
> Title from Tom Rosenthal's "Go Solo" and the fact that I like to mishear the titular lyrics. Perhaps that homonym is deliberate: Tom is the kind of songwriter who would.


End file.
